Google Buys Fridge to Enable Shared Circles on Google+

Google has acquired Fridge and its staff to work on improving Google+. Fridge engineers will help add shared Circles to the Google's new social network.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which has been moved to put "more wood behind fewer arrows" of late, is putting more wood behind its Google+ social network, which comScore said has topped 20 million users.

To that end, the search engine acquired small social startup Fridge, whose software facilitates the construction of private groups within social networks, as well as photo sharing and event planning.

Financial terms of the deal were not made public.

Both Google and Fridge confirmed the buy July 21. A Google spokesperson told eWEEK: "The Fridge team shares our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the Web, and we're excited that they'll be joining Google."

Fridge co-founder Austin Chang at least confirmed he and his small team will be working on the Google+ social network, noting in a company blog post:

"We strongly believe in the group social experience and couldn't think of a better place to realize our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the Web as part of the Google+ Project."